I'm using a laptop here at school which has a TSSTcorp CDW/DVD TS-L462A internal drive, but I have a desktop back home which has a Mad Dog MegaSTOR 16x Triple Format (MD-16X3DVD9-8X, I believe). So, my question is simply this: if I'm using AccurateRip to verify the results with EAC on both computers, does it matter which drive I use to rip my music? Would one be better than the other? I'm going for the best quality / backup of my CDs. Thanks for your help.

I originally answered based on the quality of the rips. Now the discussion has gone into more of a gray area where others undoubtedly have more experience and knowledge that I do. I don't own a laptop.

If wear is an issue, I'd also suggest that you use burst with AccurateRip if you can get away with it. In fact, a test pass isn't even necessary if AccurateRip says the rip is ok, which is even less wear than doing test and copy.

F5 followed by F8 (if needed) is just as good as F6.

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Breath is found in waveform and spectral plots;DR figures too, of course.

Thanks, greynol and Cosmo, for your help. Drive wear and tear is not as important as quality rips to me, but if the caching is going to affect it, then I better go ahead with the Mad Dog. I just have to wait until I get back home. Thanks again!

Caching drives can deliver accurate rips just fine, it's just that it takes longer because of all the extra overreading involved in order to flush the cache. This time "overreading" is different than before. I'm no longer talking about reading from the lead-out, instead I'm talking about reading extra data that isn't used to do anything except clear the audio cache.

If you use burst mode, overreading is not necessary and is not done. With burst you can rely on AccurateRip, or go with test and copy and matching CRCs to verify that the rip was secure.

I think spoon's new ripper only overreads during re-reads and does not read any more than what is necessary to clear the cache. EAC, on the other hand, overreads by 2MB even if your cache is only 100KB which is not very efficient.

If accurate rips take precedence over possible wear and tear and extra time required to rip in secure mode because you're using a drive that caches audio data, then you shouldn't have any trouble with the drive in your laptop. It could be that one drive is better at getting accurate rips than the other, but if the discs are in good condition or AccurateRip tells you that the rips are good, which drive you use isn't going to matter.

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Breath is found in waveform and spectral plots;DR figures too, of course.